6/28/12

Is Peter B. Madoff Jewish?

Madoff's grandparents were Jewish emigrants from Poland, Romania and Austria, according to Wikipedia. Peter is a member of the Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation.

The Times reports that he will plead guilty to crimes connected to the Madoff Ponzi scheme.

For nearly four decades, as the second-in-command at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, Peter B. Madoff ran the family business alongside his older brother.

On Friday, Peter Madoff — more than three years after his brother, Bernard, confessed to running a vast Ponzi scheme that swindled investors out of billions of dollars — is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Manhattan and plead guilty to criminal charges, according to prosecutors. He would be the first relative of Mr. Madoff’s to admit to wrongdoing in connection with the fraud.

Peter Madoff has agreed to a prison term of 10 years, prosecutors said in a letter filed with the court on Wednesday. As part of his plea deal, he has agreed to forfeit $143 billion, a staggering penalty that he is not likely to be able to pay. But it is a government calculation based on the amount of money that passed through the firm and a clear indication that prosecutors will seize all of his assets....